Bibi Andersson

Swedish actress Bibi Andersson received her training at the legendary Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, then graduated to the Royal Theatre of Stockholm. While performing in a stage production in Malmo, the 17-year-old Bibi, she was discovered for films by Ingmar Bergman, who tested her in a TV soap commercial before casting her in a small but showy role in Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). Exhibiting a more capricious image than most Bergman heroines, Ms. Andersson played breezily insouciant characters in the otherwise sober-sided The Seventh Seal (1957) and Wild Strawberries (1958). Her first important all-dramatic assignment was the neurotic unwed mother-to-be in Bergman's Brink of Life, for which she was honored with a Cannes Film Festival prize. Arguably her finest work under Bergman's guidance was as garrulous nurse Alma in Persona (1966), who gradually exchanges personalities with her near-comatose patient Liv Ullmann. She was also featured in one episode of Bergman's made-for-television Scenes from a Marriage (1973). On the Swedish stage, Bibi has starred in such imports as Arthur Miller's After the Fall and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Bibi Andersson's American film credits--on the whole, far less worthwhile than her European and Scandinavian efforts--have included Duel at Diablo (1966), The Kremlin Letter (1970), Airport 79: The Concorde (1979), and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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